The philosopher Thomas Hobbes famously described life in nature as “nasty, brutish, and short” a view that continues to resonate with certain members of the populace. Often a man of middle years, the modern Hobbesian can be identified by his penchant for gazing off into the middle distance, drawing in a long breath, and holding forth about the suffering inherent to existence: the pond full of tadpoles destined to be eaten long before reaching froghood, the tremendous variety of exotic illnesses and parasites that beset wild creatures, the polar bear on the melting ice floe and the seal the polar bear would like to make its next meal.
On the other extreme sits less of an ideology and more of an aesthetic. Think of the endless videos of cute animals that constitute a significant part of digital content. There are cats and dogs, of course, but also fawns tottering around on stiltlike legs and adolescent owls gazing quizzically from a nest. Rarely does anyone say it, but the implication of endless, adorable footage is clearly that animals are a fluffy, dumb, yet ultimately relatable reflection of the most innocent parts of human life.
Two recent occurrences got me thinking about this bifurcation. The first, I fear, was a bit morbid. Down by the barn I saw both of the farm cats attentively watching something. What from a distance was an ambiguous flicker of movement resolved into a grisly scene of death; a garter snake had latched onto the rear leg of a large toad with the clear intention of having an ambitious final meal before finding somewhere to hibernate. Perhaps because snakes and toads are so pedestrian I found real pathos in this grim example of the relationship between predator and prey, though when I returned hours later to see an overstuffed snake struggle beneath a stack of pallets there was something darkly comic about it.
But I’d seen something very different the day before. Working on a project with my son in the barn I had noticed an aroma I could not identify — floral, sweet, and entirely out of place. Looking around I spotted a patch of bees milling about, and I realized I was smelling honey. The beehive in the wall of the barn has been thriving for a couple years now, but it seems to be only getting bigger. Presumably they have filled all of the readily available space with comb and honey and are now packing it into the last few corners.
Any accurate account of nature should have room for both the stark reality of what survival takes, all the predation and suffering, and also of the unexpected bounty, of honey literally dripping from the walls. I am inclined to think most creatures feel a general contentment in much of their daily lives. Cows out grazing and crows engaging in loud conversation as they peck their way through wheat stubble appear to be happy, though I suspect their happiness is quite different from what you or I would mean by the word. Perhaps even bees experience some faint flicker of satisfaction as they work at constructing a waxen lattice in which to store up food for the coming winter. Because we too live in and rely on the same world that contains bees and garter snakes and toads, we should not be surprised to discover that our lives include both happiness and suffering.